Teufelsberg

I have posted a little bit on the Teufelsberg (click "birds eye" on top and be amazed - I only discovered Bing Maps yesterday, but it has some very interesting features) already, and last week on tuesday I decided to check it out. Took the s-bahn to Heerstrasse bhf after drawing a rudimentary map (not having a printer sucks) of the area, and took my photocamera with me.

The buildings and streets look much different in this area, I somehow had the feeling of arriving at the Belgian coast (first picture is of the Bahnhof).

After a five minutes walk you leave the urbanized area and get into the woods, where it takes you about twenty minutes of gently sloping walking paths between vegetation and pieces of rubble (Trümmerberg, remember? 12 million cubic metres of rubble, coming from about 400 000 buildings) - until you finally reach the site of the old radio listening post.
Picture to the left is the view I was greeted with, the white structure is the main listening/radar dome. The white pieces of plastic you see used to close off the tower, but are now destroyed and continuously flap in the wind. The dome itself is still intact, more pictures of that later.

In the front you can make out a lamp post and the overgrown fence. The fence is in good condition - although it had been repaired numerous times. I suppose those repairs date from the time that the site was still deemed worth a damn or maybe even from the time it was actually in use (although I suppose it would have been guarded well and nobody would ever get close with a pair of heavy-duty threadpliers). Some parts of the fence were repaired with military-style razor wire, though.
Now however, the main gate is open so there is no need to climb or cut your way over or through.

As I entered the site I heard a couple of trashers throwing heavy stuff around and breaking glass on a higher floor and I didn't exactly want to run into them, so I left and walked around the fence, hoping there would be an entrance at the other side.
There was indeed, a hole in the fence large enough to crawl through. Some parts of the fence consist of two fences separated about 1.5 metres apart - I guess they were an area where dogs patrolled. Picture on the left shows the corridor I had to cross to get in. By this way I entered the site by the back side and so arrived right at the main dome building.
As you can see the Bing images are pretty old already, as the "wall" of the tower is still almost intact on those images.
Also check out this website, which has a short history lesson and a lot of pictures which seem to have been made soon after the decomissioning.

The location is heavily damaged and vandalized: not a single window surviving, lots of graffity, everything not too heavy thrown around and off floors, everything of value or interest stolen or destroyed - even some room that was burned out. All transportable metal was gone, fuse closets empty, copper cabling gone, ventilation systems gone... Professional looters with equipment and vans? Quite possible.
I suppose some of the structural damage (large piles of building material lying around as well) was made when the site was decomissioned, however. Maybe to prevent it from being used for anything, or simply to get large and heavy equipment out. Most of the buildings were still structurally sound, with most holes and dangerous areas marked or covered up. Still not a walk in the park however, keep your eyes and ears open.

I entered the building in search for a staircase to climb the main tower, which I found after a while in a dark room - stupidly I had left my flashlight at home, thinking sunlight would be enough. Reminder to self: buildings designed to be mainly lighted by artificial light are generally dark when there are no lights and electricity left...


The tower itself consists of about five floors on top of the three floors of the larger building it is standing on. There is an (out of order, off course) elevator at the centre and a staircase around it. Strong wind and the continous and loud flapping of the plastic sheets made it a pretty haunting place. See the top of the lift through the opened lift doors on the picture, electronic devices like the lift operation buttons been removed/stolen.








The four pictures above and at the left show, respectively:
-Northern view from the second floor of the main building. The big white building on front is the Olympic stadion (2 km), on the back you see the condensor tower of a power plant (Heizkraftwerk Reuter West, wikimapia ftw) at 4 km distance. The stubby look of the tower is because it is shorter than a normal cooling tower - airport close by.
-Southwest view from the main building
-View through the eastern dome on the main building, with the Fernseheturm visible (distance 7 km)
-View of the foot of the radar/antenna in one of the domes on the main building.

Lift Shaft and eastern View respectively.






Picture on the left shows the steel cables used as guardrails, although normally the side would have been closed with plastic sheet.












Picture on the way up, cables and tubes running from the top to the bottom.

Sight inside the main dome, which was still completely intact and made of hard sheets of plastic. Interesting sound echos inside, as any noise was reverberating inside. Maybe the shape and material of the dome was designed to trap waves in some way, thus helping to center radio waves for the antenna in the middle? Notice the size of the dome - the square hole of light is a normally sized door.

After this I descended and checked out the other building. By this time the trashers had disappeared and I met some other people as well: a young couple and even a family with a child, who had driven their car up the driveway to the main gate (there is a roadway too, off course).



















The vertical lines on the panorama look a bit weird, that's because of the stitching software having a hard time linking those. It is made from a floor of the main tower, in southeast direction. Some interesting landmarks to be seen there as well: next to the second vertical line from the left you see two of the three chimneys of the Kraftwerk Berlin-Wilmersdorf (about 5 km away). The three tall chimneys in the centre of the picture must be another powerplant, Kraftwerk Berlin-Lichterfelde (9.3 km). The large white building to the left most likely is Autobahnüberbauung Schlangenbader Straße, which is an apartment complex on top of a motorway. Germans have these funny, dry words: Autobahnüberbauung literally means "motorwayoverbuilding".

One last interesting link: there seems to be a pretty big movement aiming for the preservation of Teufelsberg as a historic landmark and as a monument to the last Cold War victim, Major Arthur D. Nicholson, who was shot by a Russian guard in 1985. I guess it must be quite painful for men who were possibly stationed for tens of years on this base to see it in a state like this, too.

Anyway, a very interesting experience, easy to reach and pretty safe, although it might be wise to visit it with two.
Strange how the destruction and vandalism added to the experience (nobody expects an Urban Exploration location to be in great shape and brand new), although I have nothing but contempt for the kind of lowlifes going there solely for the "enjoyment" of destroying things, or for the looters making a couple of euros by hauling pieces of steel and copper outside.

Btw, the wysiwyg editor for this blog is kind of ok, but utterly sucks when you want to have some decent image layout, and has no support for tables which would make it easier.